Elon takes the L

Okay, it's been kind of like midterm loser week and today explain from Vox. We started with the Trump administration and it's Iran war on Monday. We did artificial intelligence and data centers yesterday, but there's one last loser we have to talk about. Maybe the biggest loser of them all. It's Elon. The richest person in the world spends so much money on the midterm, certainly more than any one person has ever spent on any midterms. As far as we know, about half a billion dollars and what did he get for it? Musk lost and lost and lost and then he closed out the week with another admission of defeat he killed his own cyber truck. A vehicle the second guest on our show today will call the biggest mistake in car history. Up on in for a tour of Elon's bad and batter and baddest bets. Support for today's plane comes from Anthropic. The team behind Claude Anthropic is a public benefit corporation founded on a hard question that question is how do we make sure AI goes well for people? They're working on it publishing what they find even when it's uncomfortable. Just hope in hard questions ask your hard question at claw.ai/todayexplained that's C-L-A-U-D-E.ai/todayexplained. Support for the show comes from Walmart. Walmart keeps prices low for 150 million Americans every week. They help families save on food, clothing, school supplies, and countless other necessities in every aisle. According to them, Walmart's great value product line saves shoppers up to 35% every year compared to national brands, this means families have more to spend on pizza nights, birthdays, and all the moments that matter because when Walmart says save money live better, they mean it. Learn more at Walmart.com/savemoney. Nick Robbins early reports on tech and power at the Guardian and he joined us to talk about Elon's miserable midterms. So he spent this on a ton of different super PACs, basically. He gave millions of dollars to America Pack, which is his own super PAC. That was the largest donation, at least 260 million, and then the rest was spread throughout these different packs that targeted different states around the country. For America Pack, we know that he spent in 17 states, and at least 43 races. That's to beat Sherrod Brown and his radical agenda again. James Talleriko voted to let biological men play women's sports if you don't vote. The socialist win. Last year, after he spent, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in the presidential election, he kind of seemed like he was going to walk back that level of donation. He said last May, in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future. But that seems to have changed in the past year, and partially because people in the White House, other, you know, campaigns kind of went down and said, "Look, we need you for this. We're looking at these polls. They're not good, and we need the money." What does he say as the sum of money that he's spending is growing and growing? What is the design behind his spending? So I think that one difference between this election cycle and the previous election cycle is that while he's giving all of this money, he's actually not really attaching his name to it in the way that he was before. And that's, you know, potentially because he's not a very well-liked figure. Let's talk about why I don't like Elon Musk. Volatile immature man who does not deserve his accolades. I pray for a day in society where the majority of people can't acknowledge that Elon Musk is a genuine supervillain. And if you look at how some of his previous campaign financing went with, you know, a special judicial election, people said, "We don't want you to be influencing our political campaigns. We don't want you to be such a prominent influence in our lives." He should shut his mouth and stay with his own business. Justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale. And so it kind of had this like backfire effect. And so this time around, he is certainly very, very vocal about politics, but he's not on stage with these campaigns. He's not saying, "I am the one who's funding all of this." It's a lot more clandestine. And of course, a lot of his spending was focused in Texas. So tell us what he was trying to do in his home state now. So Texas is where he spent, by far, the most amount of money, America pack dumped money into various campaigns in Texas. And then he also gave around $160 million to this super pack called the Senate Leadership Fund, which is basically this Republican-aligned pack that put money into the Ken Paxton versus James Talleriko Senate race. If you care about your children, do not vote for James Talleriko. And that becomes the biggest focus of both what he's personally kind of like targeting and tweeting about, "There is something deeply wrong with Talleriko," and speaking out about, but also the majority of where his money is going. And he lives in Texas, like Texas is where his whole empire is based now. And so he has a greater personal and financial stake in Texas than he does anywhere else in the country. About six years ago, Ish, he fully moves to Texas. And the reason that he gives is, well, California is just too stifling of innovation. If a team has been winning for too long, they do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled, and then they don't win the championship anymore. The California has been winning for a long time. And I think they're taking it for granted a little bit. Yeah. He hasn't stayed at the time, but it's kind of implied, like it's led by Democrats. It is this restrictive environment for business, whereas Texas, wow, Texas can let you innovate. It can let you build. It can let you crucially not pay as much tax. And I think that this is a huge incentive for him to move, for him to move his businesses there. And he begins making huge inroads with all the state and local government while he's doing this. And he's looking to preserve those inroads with his spending in the midterms and that backfires. Yeah. I think if you're looking at the reason why he's giving you these campaigns, you can say some of it is like ideological is political, musk is at this point, kind of a linchpin of the global far right. But in addition to what he is doing politically, there are these like huge financial incentives for him to have Republicans in office or at least a friendly administration in office. And if you look at the people who he was spending against, they are Democrats who were heavily critical of his businesses and the way that they were basically getting a free pass a lot of the time from local legislators when it came to stuff like land deals and tax breaks and federal contracts. And so what he is potentially, you know, spending all of this money to combat is this potential future wave against him from legislators, lawmakers, regulators that he's been able to stave off like pretty successfully for the past six years in Texas. And are the Democrats we're talking about who maybe will oppose his agenda in Texas, Governor-elect, Gene Ainoza, and Senator-elect James Talleriko? Yeah, I mean, they were during the campaign saying that they would take a much closer look at the way that he was operating. Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants our tax dollars. He wants his very own personal United States Senator. He is trying to buy Texas. Demand the Greg Abbott release the emails between him and Elon Musk. Gene Ainoza has pledged to kind of put a halt on this deal between SpaceX and the government to access public lands and said, "Look, we're going to take a closer look at this and not just give up a bunch of public land to this private company." Something our beach to Elon Musk is just something that is almost unimaginable. It's unacceptable. You know, these are all things that Musk needs. Musk needs this land to build out his empire. He needs these tax breaks. He needs these deals for a more preferable operating environment. Texas was personal to him, but he spent widely, as you've explained here, on races across the country, was Elon Musk himself being rejected here? Or was he just backing the very issues that voters wanted to reject in these midterms? I think it's all tied together. I think that you look at the way that people voted across the country in this election cycle, and there was this sort of repudiation of the Republican Party, but also a lot of the things that it stands for and the people associated with it. Which is like, he checks all of those boxes. Yeah, he is completely synonymous with a lot of the things that voters were opposing. I think you have Musk himself, who polling shows it's a pretty disliked figure. And then you have his association with Big Tech. Big Tech is an extremely disliked entity right now. And then you have the Republican Party, which he is also associated with. And if you go down the list, it's like it's mosque, mosque, mosque. And voters just said like we don't want any of this. - Those who have been paying close attention for, I don't know, a bit longer than his prominent saga in US politics might remember a time before they're like sigheils and the courting of the far right, where Elon Musk was paling around with Barack Obama that he may have been a Democrat even. I think he's talked about this. Do you think he maybe just like reconfigures along with the shifting political tides? - So, I mean, this is a thing that's look on Valley Daz and the tech titans are really good at, which is who's in power, that's what I'm aligned with. And they're very good at having these sort of shifting allegiances and shifting political views and kind of retroactively saying, oh, well, actually I was this all along or this person opened my eyes to the possibilities of everything. (upbeat music) It's entirely possible that like Musk at least tries to tone down some of his far right proclivities, but at this point, he's just so associated with the Republican Party and the right. And so, you know, deeply politically active in it that it's really hard to see how he does that in a way that he has managed to in the past or in that other tech CEOs seem to be able to kind of like switch back and forth on. Like, he's gone very far to the right and it's a long walk back. (upbeat music) Elon doesn't need to walk, he can take a cyber truck, but you can't because they're big, discontinued. Next on today, explain. (upbeat music) Support for the show comes from Mint Mobile. Hmm, Minty, there's a monthly expense that almost everyone has, nobody gets excited about and surprising number of people probably haven't questioned in years. It's your phone bill. Oh, I think about my phone bill all the time, Ryan. Anyway, you might assume that staying connected has to cost a small fortune, but Mint Mobile has a different idea, wireless plans that cost less. So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for 15 bucks a month, that's how much it is, by the way, go to mintmobile.com/explained. That's mintmobile.com/explained. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/explained. It's a limited time offer up from payment of $45 for three month, $90 for six month, or $180 for 12 month plan required, 15 per month equivalent, taxes of fees extra, initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required, availability, speed, and coverage of berries, seementmobile.com. Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Clawed. Most good ideas start half baked, a hunch, a rough sketch, a question you can't quite put into words, you don't need to know where to start, you can just bring Clawed, what you have, and it works to help you shape it, question it, and find that first step. You can try it at clawed.ai/explained. That's Anthropic, the team behind Clawed. You've heard of Clawed, right? From Anthropic. Support for the show comes from hymns. Let's get into it. Intimacy is best when you can be present. hymns makes it simple to access personalized treatment plans so in intimate moments, you can actually be in the moment. hymns combines personalized treatment plans and a hundred percent online, like your boyfriend, process. There are no office visits. You don't have to wait in a pharmacy line, and you don't have to worry about any awkward conversations. Hate those, you just connect with a licensed provider who can determine if treatment is right for you. Not everybody needs the same thing, which is why hymns worked with you to find the best option for you. Ready to build a better sex life? Visit hymns.com/explained for a personalized plan for sex, hair, weight loss, and more. That's h-i-m-s.com/explained. Prescription products require an online consultation with a licensed healthcare provider who will determine if a prescription is appropriate restrictions apply individual results may vary based on a survey of hymns' customers. See hymns.com for full details. Thank you. - I think it's, I think it's our best product. I think it's the most unique thing on the road. And finally, the future will look like today explained. (audience cheering) - Andrew Hawkins, a transportation editor at The Verge. - Welcome back to the program, Andrew. - As if last week weren't bad enough for Elon Musk, he also had to kill his beloved cyber truck, correlation or causation? - Oh man, starting out philosophically, I mean. Yeah, I wanna say it's probably a bit of both, right? It's like the car that he held up previously as the pinnacle of Tesla's design principles. - All right, it's gonna be a great product. I think we have best product ever. - This was the car that was going to, the truck that was going to come to define sort of like what Tesla was all about. And it turned out that nobody liked it. Everybody thought it was ugly, nobody bought it, and now it's going away. (laughing) - It's not nobody, nobody, right? 'Cause you saw them and you couldn't miss 'em and it told you a lot about the person driving it, maybe. But, okay, I'll clarify that a little bit. They sold far fewer than they expected. They built a dedicated factory in Austin where the intention was to turn out like a quarter million of these trucks a year. - A quarter million a year is a reasonable guess. And it might be 500,000, I don't know, but what will make as many as people want? - They had really high hopes aspirations for this. And they thought they had knocked it out of the park with this design, like 250,000 cyber trucks a year is like you are really feeling yourself, but they sold 20,000 last year. And I think over the entire run so far to date is a little bit over 70,000. So you're talking like less than 10% of that plan capacity. And so it's just a bit cash bonfire for them at this point. - Which relates back to the other bonfire we talked about in the first half of the show. I guess in the midterms it was unclear for at least some portion of the race whether or not Elon was lighting his money on fire, but with the cyber truck it kind of felt like everyone knew the whole time that Elon was lighting his money on fire because of how this whole adventure started for him. Can you take us back to his introduction of the cyber truck to the world? - Yeah, absolutely. So it was 2019 where they first introduced the cyber truck. - I think it's our best product. And finally, the future will look like the future. - Up until that point he was doing the typical Elon thing which was hyping this thing beyond comprehension. This was going to be the greatest truck ever made. It was going to be stronger than an F-150. - The functionality I'm going to describe is within a space that is less than the most popular pickup truck in the United States, the F-150. - It's more powerful or faster than a Porsche 911. - How does this compare to a Porsche 911? - Okay, we're going to give the Porsche a little bit of a head start. - You know, able to leave tall buildings at a single bound, he kept saying blade runner, right? That was the thing. - It's an armored personnel carrier from the future. What blade runner would have driven? - Is it blade runner was the name of the character from the movie? So it's an open question as to whether or not Elon Musk has actually seen blade runner? (laughing) - More human than human is all motto. - So when it came out, right? Roll that on stage at this event in 2019. There, you know, I know from talking to our reporter that was there at the time, audible gasps from the audience. Like they couldn't believe that this was the truck, right? Like, 'cause it looked like a garbage can. - 'Cause it looked like an angry triangle, yes. (laughing) - Was this the same demo where he was trying to like prove that the cyber trucks' windows were indestructible and he destroyed them? - The very same, Sean. - Let's show the glass demo. - They were trying to prove that this was the indestructible truck that included the glass, the head designer threw a metal ball bearing at the window and it shattered. - Oh my God, well, maybe that was a little too hard. (laughing) And they were like, oh, whoops, they did it again, they did it twice and it shattered both times. - It didn't go through, as a plus side. - Let's try that one, right? Try that one, really? - Okay. - Sure. (laughing) - Oh, man, it didn't go through. (laughing) - And yeah, it just has, you know, there's that image will forever be burned in my brain of Elon Musk looking kind of sheepish standing in front of the cyber truck with two busted windows. Did it ever get much better from there? - I don't think so. I mean, the first year that it finally came out, 2020. 3 all these videos kept popping up online the cyber truck getting stuck in some sand the sands have claimed another cyber truck This time very mild flat beach sand the cyber truck and it's stuck in some snow this cyber truck driver got stuck in the same snow storm The cyber truck needing to get towed out of something by a real truck luckily another truck more prepared for the rough weather Was nearby and helped pull the vehicle out of a bad situation time for cartoon It was just sort of like this humiliation ritual that it wasn't quite clear like what Tesla was really giddy out of this right It was a a very low volume high capital intensive truck That just was being mercilessly mocked online by by the commentary it wasn't the Tesla cyber truck advertised as Bill for any planet certainly not bill for planet earth unlike this Honda fit that just blast by you'll be having a great day The side of China the bird is chirping you in a chipper ass moon and here come a cyber truck Just pissed you off. Why do like that? You will never convince me to trade my truck in for a cyber truck now And then there was just you know sort of like all the recalls right there was a recall for the acceleration pedal That would get stuck if you pressed down on it too hard, which is not something I think like a lot of people would want to happen when they're in a you know multi-tun steel stainless steel vehicle there was a Recall about the panels the panels themselves were coming off like apparently Tesla was using kind of like a subpar glue to hold some of these panels down and they were kind of flapping in the breeze Even one for the diverge his own very favorite design aspect of the cyber truck Which was the comically oversized windshield wiper? Just just a huge huge windshield wiper that apparently did not actually meet safety standards So it was just kind of like you know, they they had to you know sort of like bend themselves over backwards to build the thing And then the end product turned out to not really be up to snuff It drops in late 2023 of course come 2024 Elon Musk makes him one of the most prominent faces trying to get Donald Trump elected He succeeds then he becomes one of the most prominent and divisive faces in his cabinet and And far increases how much the average American has to think about him and also revile him Did that hurt the cyber truck or did it just fail on its own merits? Yeah, I you know I don't have like scientific data to point this out But I do think the beginning of the end of the cyber truck was early 2025 when you started to see the Tesla protests The doge protestors they call themselves Tesla takedown Their mission, you know, and they said that interviewed a lot of them I went to several protests and I talked to a lot of these folks and their mission was to actively Reduce Elon Musk's net worth they wanted to hit him in his wallet They wanted to hit him in this pocketbook and they thought that you know that making Tesla You know basically a toxic brand was the best way to do it So I do think that you know the the cyber truck had a lot of deficiencies Already if it wasn't directly linked to It's designer and owner of the of the company and then that person You know was went sort of the political route that he did with endorsing Trump and becoming sort of a Shit mag essentially for everyone that was you know pissed off about the election So, you know, I do think that you know the cyber truck might have still existed in kind of like a niche Low volume like collectors item capacity But because Tesla was was hit with this absolute, you know brand You know sort of tsunami that there was a there was no possible chance that it could even sort of continue on in that kind of like Reduced fashion and then it got adopted by the mega folks, right? They they leaned into it and you saw Right-wing YouTubers and influencers driving cyber trucks wrapping them in like Trump and mega-themed Raps and like really just sort of like fully embracing in that and that point I think that the cyber trucks fate was sealed and then they got hit by the blue Nami They got hit by the blue Nami indeed so to deal on what do you think it'll say on the cyber trucks headstone Andrew Here lies the Tesla cyber truck the greatest automotive flop in modern history I I think that that you know like there's a lot of flops scattered throughout car history There's the Pontiac Aztec. There's the four dead cell. Yeah, you know, even the DeLorean I think could be called an automotive flop, but it lives on as an icon because of back to the future Roads I Don't think that there's any such you know sort of like grasses greener for the cyber truck I think it is was going to go down as the biggest mistake in car history and I think like it really kind of signals Sort of like also where Tesla is going right like Tesla is like, you know They're kind of getting out of the car business They've already phased out the Model S and Model X You know the Model 3 and the Model Y are still printing printing money for the company But they're fully you know going in all in on Robotics and AI so Elon said that this was you know the decision To to wind down the cyber truck was to make more room for production of the cyber cap And that's that's total bullshit. They have plenty of room It's just been they have plenty of room at their factory to build the cyber cap There's really no reason to get rid of the cyber truck unless it was also because they were losing so much money on it So yeah, I do think that this will go down as one of the biggest failures at history Andrew Hawkins writes about cars at the Verge Nick Robbins early is always on time for the Guardian I'm Sean Romis for him Danielle Hewitt and Dustin DeZoto produced the program today Jolly Myers misses the Aztec Bridger Dunnigan is paying tolls David Tattishore saved Patsy and Gabriel done it off Probably drives into coma. It's today explained Some of the show comes from Kuo. It's that time of year when you've got a pack schedule of million things on your mind And if you're running a business, it's easier than ever for something to fall through the cracks especially miss calls But this holiday season Kuo has your back no more missing calls Quo spelled Q. U. O by the way is the business phone that picks up when you can't you can find all your calls Text and voicemails in one place so anyone your team can pick up a conversation see the full history and respond Bast money is on the line always say hello with Quo try Quo for free plus Get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo dot com slash explained And in case you weren't listening earlier that is Q. U. O that kind of Quo like status quo dot com slash Explained you can get set up in no time and keep your existing number again and add teammates as you grow Keep growing y'all